End "Honour" Killings in Pakistan

Saba was shot in the face, put in a bag and thrown in a river in Pakistan by her father and uncle at age 19. The reason? She wanted to marry for love.

Amazingly, she survived. However, though her attackers were arrested and she got legal and medical assistance, her father and uncle walked free because she was pressured to ‘forgive’ them as is currently allowed by the law. Saba’s powerful story is told in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Academy Award-winning film, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness.

Every year over a thousand women are killed in the name of 'honour' in Pakistan - shot, strangled, burned, and stoned. Wives, daughters and mothers are being killed on mere suspicions or on false accusations for the most trivial of matters. But many of the men that perpetrate these crimes go unpunished because the law in Pakistan currently allows victims or their families to ‘forgive’ the perpetrator. A surviving victim typically faces intense pressure to 'forgive,' and if she is killed (the majority of cases), her family has the right to forgive on her behalf. So when a father kills his daughter, his wife can forgive him and when a brother kills his sister, his parents can forgive him. In essence, this means that there is impunity for perpetrators of such heinous crimes, and therefore #honourkillings continue every year.

Please sign this petition to end impunity for #honourkillings in Pakistan.

It’s urgent. We need a law that ends impunity for perpetrators of 'honour' crimes right now. We are partnering with international human rights organization, Equality Now, to call on the government to pass a law that ensures that these crimes are prosecuted with no possibility of compromise by the family of the victim or the court.

Would you help? Sign and share this petition and help women and girls in Pakistan fight #honourcrimes.